WitH THE STORY TELLERS

To check McMurrough’s pikemen
Advancing on their foe.
The English left is falling back,
Their center is hard pressed;
But on the right still raged the fight,
With foemen breast to breast;
Until McMurrough’s pikemen reach
Where Ormond’s troops prevail
His boasted cavalry this time,
To check the pikemen fail.
For to withstand the Irish right
That threatened his defeat;
He summoned up all the reserves,
That covered his retreat.
Appealed to English loyalty,
Nor made appeal in vain;
But in the thickest of the fight,
The Earl of March was slain.

Now consternation seized the ranks
Of England’s fighting men;
As in disorganized retreat,
They fled through wood and glen.
Their officers no safety feel
Till Dublin’s towers they see;
Secure again behind its walls,
They soon grow gay at feasts and balls,
And in its princely courts and halls
Forgot the enemy.

Throughout the country far and wide
The joyful news was spread;

This army of eight thousand men,

Before McMurough fled:

Still in the court of England’s king
The news was told again—

The heir presumptive to the throne
In Ossory was slain.

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